WWW: The Muggles Get it Wrong; Indie Untangled; Knitting for the War Effort

There’s been a rash of articles (well, ok, two) in the mainstream press of late, about the recent “resurgence” of knitting. It’s always nice to see knitting talked about, but both of these pieces landed badly.

Once again, we see mention of the “granny” stereotypes, our motivations misunderstood, and the work of our hands tragically undervalued.

Feisty knitter Kay Gardiner, (lawyer, author, mother and all-around smart person) decided that we should show the world what else we do. She kicked off the “ANDknitting” hashtag. The idea was to educate the Guardian and the world at large about the wide range of people who knit, and what else we do to “fill our time”. Much wonderful stuff ensued – I know I learned an awful lot about the varied and smart and interesting people in our knitting community.

We’re intrigued by the launch of Indie Untangled. This is a website dedicated to helping crafters discover hand-dyed yarn and fiber. It’s a combination of marketplace and information resource, allowing indie dyers to provide information about their yarns and fibers and where to find them. Dyers will post on the website when they are updating their stores, and with news about their products, and the Indie Untangled team will be writing a newsletter and blog post about products they’ve discovered and news and goings-on in the indie yarn world.

Including political issues, accidents, crimes. No one does in depth reporting on anything. One of the morning news shows sent a non-crafter to a recent needlework expo in New York. She didn’t recognize the famous people there or the unique exhibits on display. Is is maddening.

I don’t know, neither of those articles are as annoying as the one you mentioned last week about hipster knitter dude, which you know only got written because he was a dude, and you didn’t seem to have a problem with that one!

At this point, I’m actually more annoyed with the use of the word “muggles” to refer to people who don’t knit than I am by any knitting stereotype. It smacks of “we’re so much more special than you” and it’s irritatingly precious.

I always love reading the comments on my posts, and I read the comments about the use of the word “muggles” with great interest.

I’ve been using it for two reasons: the first is that in a blog post about knitting, I end up using the words “knitter” and “knitting” an awful lot, and I like to find a synonym or alternative word where I can. In addition, I use “muggle” in particular because it’s a word that amuses me. It’s a bit less dry than “non-knitters”.

I can see how it could be read as precious or twee. But it wasn’t intended that way, honestly!

It irks me because it feels very exclusionary — like “Oooh, there’s no way you could possibly understand knitting!” Nothing would put me off a new hobby faster than someone who does said hobby calling me a muggle — it’s so condescending. That’s the exact opposite of what you want, right?